Designers Debate the Future of Denim Fits
What will denim fits be like five years in the future? It depends on what generation you’re asking.
In a conversation moderated by Markt&Twigs founder Michelle Branch, designers debated the future of denim fits last week at Kingpins Amsterdam.
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The talk was part of Future Fit, a project by Seoul, Korea-based spandex producer Hyosung that tasked five designers from various backgrounds to explore how they believe fit will evolve. In keeping with the denim tradition of marrying icons with innovation, the designers were given two landfill-bound Levi’s 501 jeans to upcycle and two yards of US Denim fabric made with Hyosung’s Creora bio-based spandex to produce their visionary garments.
From practical and comfortable shapes to new extremes, designers wove their design ethos into their garments. Decode founder Danielle Elsener reinterpreted the 1920s jumpsuit designed by Italian futurist artist Ernesto Michahelles. As one of the first known open-source fashion patterns, she said the jumpsuit represents a democratic approach to fit.
“I do believe the future of fit is democratic,” Elsener said. “The future of fit is something that anyone can take apart themselves and change and modify and make it exactly how they want.”
For her jumpsuit, Elsener turned the garment on the bias. Using fabric from the 501 jeans and one yard of Creora fabric, she stitched them together to create a new herringbone-like fabric for the genderless jumpsuit.
“It looks cool on the body. But more importantly, the herringbone pattern was used by the Romans to create roads which are quite indestructible, even to this day,” she said. “So, if we’re trying to create the future of sustainable change, I wanted to use a structure that’s as indestructible as possible.”
Gatto designers Floyd Rorije and Olivia Lotterberger envision a future where “fits are misfits”—garments are tight where they are normally loose and loose where they are normally tight.
“For us, the Levi’s 501 is the perfect fit for jeans, so we made it very tight in the waist and low in the crotch,” Rorije said. The Gen Z designers attached a stretch denim top to the jeans to make it into a one-piece and sewed in a Union Jack T-shirt for a pop of color and print.
Rorije said society is doing its part to shape fits as consumers continue to be influenced by what they see on other people and tweak it to fit their style.
“We are influenced by society, but we also have to work with the material we have so fabric can influence fit,” said Lucia Rosin, founder of the Italian creative consultancy Meidea.
The worn-in 501 jeans and Creora stretch fabric lent themselves to a design focused on comfort. Rosin and her team combined their experience with fabrics to make a trio of no-size, genderless, reversible garments, each equipped with straps and elastic to adjust fit.
The Scotch & Soda team’s vision for the future is more emotional. Speaking on behalf of the team, Imogen Nulty-Verstraeten, global director of Scotch & Soda’s denim division, said the design was inspired by the desire of wanting to feel safe.
“I think a lot is going on in the world where you feel things are changing, things are adapting, and people are feeling quite unsure. And we wanted to produce something that was really like a big hug,” she said.
The resulting design is called the Knuffel jean (Dutch for “hug”). The team reconstructed the 501 jeans into a super loose fit with double front pleats and chino pockets. They reattached the waistband and made a belt out of the extra fabric. They also covered the garment with wool appliques that the wearer can stroke to help feel calm and comfortable.
“We wanted to link it back to our roots as a brand and we talked about it being tactile and how the silhouette needs to be nice and loose because you should be comfortable almost like you can go to sleep in these jeans,” Nulty-Verstraeten said.
Fit, she added, is subconscious to designers.
“I try to be personal. I think what’s important when you’re making a product, even if it’s for a massive brand and no one will ever realize that you were the person that sat down and designed it. I think you’ve got to have a connection to what you’re doing,” Nulty-Verstraeten said.
